I attended an off-campus recruitment drive held on March 7, 2015, at the main office in Bangalore. The process was very simple and well-defined, consisting of four rounds of interviews.

1. Written Test: This round included questions on aptitude, data structures, algorithms, networking, reasoning, C, and C++. It comprised 50 questions to be answered in 60 minutes.

2. Technical Interview: This round focused on assessing coding comfort. I answered every question clearly and cleared this round. Some questions asked were:

   • How to perform a preorder traversal of a tree, both recursively and iteratively.
   • Memory layout in C.
   • How to compare two strings effectively (O(n)).
   • How to sort an array; what is the best technique to select and why.
   • How the internet works.

3. Network Round: This round was based solely on networking concepts. I did not clear this round due to questions on IP headers, TCP headers, sockets, IPv4, IPv6, and some device-related topics. Some questions asked were:

   • Write a program to convert a decimal number to binary.
   • How to convert a tree into a binary search tree.
   • How internet devices work.
   • How Wireshark works.
   • Some questions based on const pointers.
   • Explain how NAT works.
   • What is IP addressing? Explain each one in depth. I answered the coding questions efficiently but was a little weak in networking, which is why I did not get this opportunity.

4. HR Round: This was a simple formality, including questions about my weaknesses, strengths, and why I was interested in Cisco.

How to compare two strings effectively (O(n))